TRI In The News
Speech Cost: $250?
6/24/2011
TRI IN THE NEWS: SPEECH COST: $250?
From Fredericksburg.com
Original article available here.
ON APRIL 15, one Nathan Cox-- Iraq war veteran, blogger, anarchist, and, well, oddball--was driving in Richmond when he saw a police officer who was, Mr. Cox suspected, conducting a traffic stop. This is not an activity that warms the anarchist heart. So Mr. Cox reached for his bullhorn--this and a video camera are evidently indispensable to his avocation--and shouted to the local copper, "Stop harassing people--we pay your paychecks!"
Whereupon the officer stopped harassing "people" and started harassing a "person"--namely, Mr. Cox, whom he arrested for disorderly conduct and who subsequently got slapped with a $250 fine, plus 10 days in jail (suspended), the judge said, for "being a jerk."
The Rutherford Institute is defending Mr. Cox on First Amendment grounds. "Under the U.S. Constitution," says Rutherford President John Whitehead, "people can't be criminally convicted for simply exercising their right to free speech, and it shouldn't matter who the object of their speech is. If the First Amendment means anything, it means that speech that is disagreeable or annoying is protected and cannot simply be written off as 'disorderly conduct.' To make exceptions for the police would be to concede that we live in a police state."
Well said. Police officers generally deserve respect, but they are not entitled to it upon pain of incarceration and fine. Nor is being a "jerk" a violation of the criminal code. If it were, Mr. Cox might indeed have crossed the line--and found a lot of company.
